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Identifying and Enlisting Forest and Indigenous Peoples[#373]

In many of the countries, like Bangladesh, influential peoples from outside of the Forest and adjacent areas get permits of forest resources by using their political and social powers. As they have no traditional knowledge of biodiversity resource collection and they do not consider the customary laws related with resource collection, and they consider the profit only, the trade-based collection of forest resources declining the forest gradually. So identifying the Forest and Indigenous Peoples and develop a list of the individuals of the communities is very important.Forest Peoples Programme, Unnayan Onneshan and Humanitywatch have taken an initiative to identify and enlist Forest People in a model Union (the lowest administrative unit) of Bangladesh with support from Forest Department and Amadi Union Parishad (a Union adjacent to the Sundarbans, the largest single track mangrove forest in the world). To implement this pilot programme, the organizations has taken some steps like:1. Consultation meeting with Civil Society to develop a definition of Forest People2. Discussion meeting with Forest Department to finalize the definition and process of identification3. Consultation meeting with Forest Peoples communities to review the definition and process4. Consultation meeting with respective Union Parishad to share roles and responsibilities and the process5. Identifying Forest Peoples Localities through using PRA tool (social resource map)6. Door-to-door census survey to identify forest depending people7. Checking the forest peoples list of forest people through signature of Union Council Member and Chairman8. Verifiying the list through Sharing meeting with the Union Council9. Reviewing the list through Public Hearing10. Finalization of the list through approval of Forest Department11. Experience Sharing with respective Organization/institutions and replication in another Union

The programme has already launched in February 1, 2009 and will be completed within April 2009.

posted on 2009-03-05 19:51 UTC by Hasan Mehedi, Humanity Watch

RE: Identifying and Enlisting Forest and Indigenous Peoples[#393]

Thanks Mehedi for bringing in your perspective from a wetland of international importance such as the Sundarbans. The plight of the Sundarbans traditional resource users and the tremendous limitations and obstacles they face in carrying out their customary practices are of such proportions that they asked for support from NGOs to organise a process of identification and listing of forest peoples, so that a process of recognition of their traditional occupations and a role of in the governance and management of the Sundarbans wetland can be started. In this context, providing support to marginalised communities to self-organise and to carry out a process of identification along traditional occupations directly linked to the customary use of specific environmental/natural resources can be a good first step towards protecting and encouraging customary use in line with 10c. Some background literature on this can be found at http://unnayan.org/Publications.htm, specifically:

This case represents a tragic example of marginalisation of traditional resource users, which hopefully the implementation of 10c can help address and redress. In other cases, processes of self-identification, especially of indigenous peoples, as the right of self-identification of indigenous peoples is a well-established right in international law, is rightly a process internal to them, which may not need external support, but just recognition.